GOLDMAN’S OUTSPOKEN PRESS AIDE SIGNS OFF
LUCAS VAN Praag was well-known for firing cerebral, elegantly worded scorn on anyone who crossed paths with Goldman Sachs. So the PR man’s exit from the bank, as confirmed yesterday, was similarly well-phrased.
“C’est la vie,” emailed Goldman’s chief spokesman, the logical conclusion to the leak earlier this week that Jake Siewart, former aide to Treasury secretary Tim Geithner and press secretary in the Clinton administration, was in talks to take over his role.
Goldman declined to comment – but the reshuffle marks an end of a communications era at the bank, a reign where van Praag memorably presided over Lloyd Blankfein’s Sunday Times interview where the Goldman CEO said that bankers do “God’s work”.
The Rolling Stone profile that described the bank as a “vampire squid” also fell under van Praag’s watch, as did – earlier this week – the retort to the Wall Street Journal’s questions about rumours Blankfein is planning to resign. “It is preposterous that the Wall Street Journal would even consider publishing such effluent,” fumed van Praag.
So where now for the man who reached Goldman in 2006 via the Merchant Navy, the Bankers Trust and financial comms house Brunswick, where he was said to be a right-hand man to Alan Parker, the PR guru who made Gordon Brown his son’s godfather? No doubt van Praag will, in time, supply an elegantly worded statement.
OUT OF AFRICA
IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time when Richard Williamson of Jendens Securities dived into the fountain at Mirabaud Securities’ party at the Indaba mining conference. This year, the industry is hoping for a repeat performance.
The cocktail party is one of the highlights of the world’s largest mining investment conference, which starts next Monday in Cape Town – although the expected 7,000 delegates start flying out from today to “maximise the weekend”.
The elephant in the room when South Africa’s mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu (below) takes to the stage next Tuesday will be Impala Platinum, after the world’s largest platinum producer yesterday sacked 17,200 workers for illegally striking. “We hope Shabangu will reassure people it is still safe to do business in South Africa,” said the director of one Aim-listed explorer as he prepared to fly out.
Ministerial delegations from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sweden are among those attending, as are representatives of Stellar Diamonds, the FTSE 250-listed Centamin, Liberia-based Aureas and Hummingbird Resources, the gold miner run by 35-year-old Daniel Betts that is undergoing “lightning growth”.
Glencore’s executives are otherwise occupied as they manoeuvre the $80bn merger with Xstrata, but Xstrata’s local South African team will still be making an appearance. “I know this, because they called me on another matter,” said an Indaba spokesperson.
The same Xstrata that pre-Glencore takeover announcement was rumoured to be looking at a number of companies itself – such as Nkwe Platinum, the Australian-listed explorer led by Peter Landau. “But all that is now on hold,” says a mining mole.
STOCK CHECK
SHARE PRICES of the companies attending Indaba “tend to go up” in the run-up to the event, says an observer, because the conference that translates as “news” in the local dialect is the ideal place to make a big announcement.
Petra Diamonds, whose stock soared 10.5p, or eight per cent, as the delegates packed their suitcases yesterday, seems to bear that out.
HUMAN CAPITAL
THOMAS Edison tried more than 9,000 experiments before he invented the first successful lightbulb. And the vacuum cleaner created by James Dyson that is now found in a third of all British homes was launched in a recession.
Two facts, says HSBC Private Bank’s managing director Charlie Hoffman, that show why a downturn acts as a catalyst for growth for entrepreneurs and small businesses. “Economic hardship or uncertainty can drop or reshape barriers to entry, it can free up human capital, and it can create diamond ideas from a coal seam,” he said as he launched the nominations for the HSBC and PwC-backed Private Business Awards.
This year’s voting panel includes Dechert partner Miriam Gonzales, Carla Stent, the chief operating officer of Virgin Management, and Paul Dreschler of Wates Group, last year’s Private Business Awards chief executive of the year.
DA VINCI CODE
CREDIT SUISSE gave its senior bankers a preview of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition as the lead sponsor of the sold-out show (The Capitalist, 23 November).
And, not to be outdone, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is bankrolling the restoration of one of da Vinci’s earliest manuscripts at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
Five Marc Chagall paintings at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and a collection of first-century BC Urartian jewellery at Istanbul’s Rezan Has Museum are also being restored, as this year’s recipients of Merrill’s art conservation programme.